Co-MOF-based coordination engineering collaborated with defect control guiding the enhanced electrocatalysis sensing towards catechol

Catechol (CT) is an important organic raw material in industrial production. However, CT could bring serious pollution and damage to humans due to its non-degradability and carcinogenicity in spite of providing abundant industrial products. Therefore, the determination of catechol is of great significance. In this paper, a series of battercake-like hierarchical composites of TA-Co-MOF-t/NCNF/CC were constructed by the dual-in situ modification, coordination engineering and defect regulation strategies. Two-dimensional nitrogen-doped carbon nanofiber (NCNF) was first in-situ grown on carbon cloth (CC) and Co-Metal-Organic Framework (Co-MOF) with different morphologies was in-situ anchored on NCNF/CC. Then, the composites of Co-MOF/NCNF/CC were further endowed with crystal defects by adopting tannin acid (TA) as etching agent to expose more active sites. The composites of TA-Co-MOF-t/NCNF/CC showed enhanced electrocatalytic oxidation activity towards catechol due to the synergistic effect between TA-Co-MOF, NCNF and CC. This work aims at developing efficient composite interfaces to improve the electrocatalytic performances of MOFs towards catechol, and providing new ideas and perspectives for the controllable preparation of high-performance electrochemical sensor.